Protesters demand 'regime change' for US

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A roaring three-kilometre river of demonstrators surged through the canyons of Manhattan in the city's largest political protest in decades, a raucous but peaceful spectacle that pilloried US President George Bush and demanded regime change in Washington.

On a sweltering August Sunday, the huge throng of protesters marched past Madison Square Garden, the site of the Republican national convention, and denounced President Bush as a misfit who had plunged America into war and runaway debt, undermined civil and constitutional rights, lied to the people, despoiled the environment and used the presidency to benefit corporations and millionaires.

The protest organiser, United for Peace and Justice, estimated the crowd at 500,000, rivalling a 1982 anti-nuclear rally in Central Park, and double the number it had predicted. It was, at best, a rough estimate. Some media organisations put the figure at 120,000.

The march, which took nearly six hours to complete, was a tense, shrill trek.

And while there were about 200 arrests, the lengthy event went off without significant violence, despite fears of explosive clashes with the biggest security force ever assembled in New York.

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Today, one of New York's favourite sons will launch the campaign to get President Bush re-elected.

Rudy Giuliani, who was New York mayor when al-Qaeda struck in 2001, will tell delegates to the Republican convention that Mr Bush is working to defeat terrorism.

He will compare Mr Bush to British prime minister Winston Churchill, who helped defeat Nazism, and to former US president Ronald Reagan, who helped defeat the Soviet Union.

"Winston Churchill saw the dangers of Hitler when his opponents and much of the press characterised him as a war-mongering gadfly," Mr Giuliani will say, according to excerpts of a prepared speech.

"George W. Bush sees world terrorism for the evil that it is, and he will remain consistent to the purpose of defeating it."

Mr Bush will also get support from Vice-President Dick Cheney, who, at a news conference on Sunday, said Mr Bush "is a man of his word, as the Taliban were the first to find out".